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Introduction Learning Japanese characters is one of the biggest challenges for students of Japanese as a foreign language. But it is very important to pass this hurdle for hiragana and katakana since these are essential to properly understand Japanese pronunciation. This workbook will help you to quickly memorize all hiragana and katakana characters. First you will understand the stroke order of the character and start repeating it by writi ng on the pre-populated fields to then turn to free writing on the empty fields. You can further increase you understanding of the stroke order by watching the stroke order video on the NIHONGO ICHIBAN website. Print the sheets on your printer as often as you like and continuously improve your Japanese writing style.
How we support Japanese education overseas With each book sold we support foreign students who want to learn Japanese. 10% of the revenue from our books is donated to Ashinaga. Ashinaga is a non-profit organization in Japan supporting orphans with scholarships. More than 60,000 orphans have graduated from schools with Ashinaga scholarship support since its foundation in 1969. You can get more information from the Ashinaga Website at www.ashinaga.org
The Japanese writing system The Japanese written language consists of a combination of three types of characters. To a lesser extend it nowadays also uses some Latin alphabet for abbreviations and numbers. 1) Kanji () Kanji originally came from China to Japan. The term “ kanji ” literally means “Han
characters” or “Chinese characters” and it is identical to the characters in China to describe their writing. Kanji are mainly used to describe names and nouns. When used in verbs and adjectives they mostly are written in combination with hiragana . Most sentences include kanji as well as hiragana .
Japanese dictionaries list around 10,000 kanji . The Japanese government limited the kanji used in official publications to the 1945 touyou kanji with about 4000 readings. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is based on these 1945 touyou kanji . A Japanese with average education knows around 3000 kanji and it is estimated that around 4000 kanji are used in Japanese literature. 2) Hiragana () Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet that was developed in the ninth century to simplify writing. It nowadays is mainly used for native Japanese words. Hiragana are derived from more complex kanji and each hiragana represents a syllable. A total of 46 hiragana are used in
contemporary Japanese writing. List of the 46 hiragana and their 25 diagritics (with or ) A
The combination of some of these hiragana is used to express a few additional sounds used in Japanese. The first character is written in normal size whereas the second character is written a little bit smaller. These combinations are called digraphs. List of 21 hiragana digraphs and their 15 diagritics YA
YU
YO
(kya)
(kyu)
(kyo)
(gya)
(gyu)
(gyo)
(sha)
(shu)
(sho)
(ja)
(ju)
(jo)
(cha)
(chu)
(cho)
(ja)
(ju)
(jo)
(nya)
(nyu)
(nyo)
(hya)
(hyu)
(hyo)
(bya)
(byu)
(byo)
(pya)
(pyu)
(pyo)
(mya)
(myu)
(myo)
(rya)
(ryu)
(ryo)
3) Katakana () Katakana also is a phonetic alphabet covering the same syllable as hiragana and it
therefore also has 46 different characters. It is mainly used for foreign loanwords and sometimes to replace kanji or hiragana for emphasis. Katakana w ere developed in the ninth century and are also derived from more complex kanji. NIHONGO ICHIBAN PRINT YOURSELF Hiragana + Katakana Workbook
7
List of the 46 basic katakana and their 25 diagritics (with or ) A
I
U
E
O
(a)
(i)
(u)
(e)
(o)
(ka)
(ki)
(ku)
(ke)
(ko)
(ga)
(gi)
(gu)
(ge)
(go)
(sa)
(shi)
(su)
(se)
(so)
(za)
(ji)
(zu)
(ze)
(zo)
(ta)
(chi)
(tsu)
(te)
(to)
(da)
(ji)
(zu)
(de)
(do)
(na)
(ni)
(nu)
(ne)
(no)
(ha)
(hi)
(fu)
(he)
(ho)
(ba)
(bi)
(bu)
(be)
(bo)
(pa)
(pi)
(pu)
pe)
(po)
(ma)
(mi)
(mu)
(me)
(mo)
(ya)
(yu)
(ra)
(ri)
(ru)
(wa)
(yo) (re)
(ro) (o/wo)
(n)
As with hiragana there also are combinations to express the other sounds required for the Japanese language. List of 21 katakana digraphs and their 15 diagritics YA
These 46 katakana and their variations are sufficient to express all sounds used for Japanese words. In order to get closer to the pronunciation of foreign words, a list of not so common extended katakana is used. List of extended katakana A
It is possible to write everything in hiragana or katakana since both scripts cover the entity of sounds of the Japanese language, although this is not very practical due to the high number of words having the same pronunciation but different meanings. All characters are written one by one and in the same size. There are no spaces between different words, which feels a little bit unusual for most foreigners. It t akes time to get used to this and easily distinguish different words. It is important to write the strokes in the correct order and directions to give the characters the right shape. The reason why becomes obvious when practicing with a brush pen1 , which is very much recommended for beginners. Japanese writing is made in two directions. Horizontal writing ( yokogaki ) is from the left to the right as in western style. Traditional writing (tategaki ) is vertical starting from the right top and ending at the left bottom. A book printed in tategaki opens from what Westerners would call the back, while a book printed in yokogaki opens from what traditionally in Japan would have been considered the back. 2
1 A brush
pen is a pen with a brush instead of a brush instead of the nib. You can get them in some Japanese shops or via mail order. 2 Wikipedia,
Search code: 305F Search http://nihongoichiban.com http://nihongoichiban.com with with the search code and watch the stroke order video. video. strokes
Search code: 3061 Search http://nihongoichiban.com http://nihongoichiban.com with with the search code and watch the stroke order video. video. strokes
Search code: 3064 Search http://nihongoichiban.com http://nihongoichiban.com with with the search code and watch the stroke order video. video. strokes
Search code: 30F2 Search http://nihongoichiban.com http://nihongoichiban.com with with the search code and watch the stroke order video. video. strokes
Search code: 30F3 Search http://nihongoichiban.com http://nihongoichiban.com with with the search code and watch the stroke order video. video. strokes
Visit us on the Internet Get to know everything about the Japanese language. We post regularly on Japanese grammar, vocabulary and specific glossaries. You will also find videos with the stroke orders for each character listed on our books.
http://nihongoichiban.com
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http://facebook.dj/nihongoichiban/
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Get anything from Japan at http://nihon-ichiban.com
The Nihongo Ichiban book series Kanji workbooks for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test We will soon publish more material to help you learning Japanese in combination with the NIHONGO ICHIBAN website. • Kanji workbook for JLPT N5 to N1 • Japanese Grammar • Flash-cards and posters with Japanese characters Please visit our website to see our latest publications. http://nihongoichiban.com/books/
Nicolas Soergel was born in Germany in 1969. After completing his studies of business administration at the University of Cologne he started his professional career in finance with Sony. He later played a major in setting up the German, Austrian and Swiss operations of the British vacuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson.
In 2000, Nicolas moved to Japan. At the age of 34, he become CEO of the Japanese subsidiary of T-Systems - a Deutsche Telekom group company. Three years later he took over responsibility for the Asia Pacific region. Today Nicolas and his Japanese wife run Chinriu Honten Limited, a family business for traditional Japanese food that was founded in 1871. He also runs the NIHON ICHIBAN website to provide foreigners with high class goods from Japan. Since his first days of studying Japanese during university Nicolas felt a strong need to improve learning material for Japanese as a foreign language. It is after living in Japan for more than 10 years that he started helping students to learn the Japanese language with nihongoichiban.com and the NIHONGO ICHIBAN PRINT YOURSELF workbooks.
